


Little Darlin' - Stuck on You

by 221b_hound



Series: Guitar Man [69]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Chewing gum mishap, Gen, Haircuts, Sherlock's Hair, also bunsen burner mishap, the dangers of parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-17
Updated: 2014-02-17
Packaged: 2018-01-12 20:22:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1198455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is a bit too busy showing Violet off around the station - and getting distracted while deducing the staff - that he utterly misses 5 year old Violet being given gum, eating the gum, then disposing of the gum in his hair. Then there's the palaver of trying to get the mess out of what John calls his 'pretty fucking princess hair'. But Violet is nothing if not encouraging and helpful at all times.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Darlin' - Stuck on You

**Author's Note:**

> This LIttle Darlin' story comes from a prompt (and some dialogue!) given by Natsuko1978. More hair related stories to come in this series!   
> The main title is from the Beatles song, but the subtitle this time is from Lionel Ritchie.  
> This story contains not very subtle references to dancing!Sherlock, Otterlock and Hedgejawn.

Having small children was more dangerous to one’s hair than Sherlock could ever have imagined.

For example, there was the time some idiot at the station had given Violet chewing gum. Sherlock and John had stopped by to sign a statement. While John read the paperwork thoroughly, Sherlock had taken Violet on a little tour of the station floor. He claimed he had a theory he wanted to test about Sergeant Voules, but mostly he just wanted to show Violet off.

But then he got momentarily distracted, because actually, his theory about Voules having a second job as a singing strippergram (and inappropriately using his real uniform as a costume for the task) was complicated by the fact that Voules was _also_ moonlighting as a clown at children’s parties.

And it was while he was distracted for those two minutes the deed was done. Macalister, an inveterate gum chewer from way back, had popped a fresh stick of gum into his mouth while Violet was watching, and had looked so fascinated that he gave her a stick of her own, because who could resist her, the little cutie?

In fact, with her big eyes and winsome smile she’d managed to wrangle three sticks out of the man, who had either never had children or had some malevolent streak in him a mile wide.

By the time Sherlock had lost interest in Voules again, five year old Violet had shoved all three sticks in her mouth at once and began masticating them with a look of scientific concentration on her face. Sherlock didn’t realise it was gum she was eating, because he was still not properly paying attention. He was by then distracted by the realisation that Constable Karen Doolan was withholding evidence in three burglaries because she was trying to get the evidence that tied them all together and so look good to her boss. Lestrade wasn't likely to be impressed with her methods.

Sherlock resume his look-at-my-girl promenade, so for five minutes, Violet chewed gum with a thoughtful expression, but then suddenly tired of the whole thing. So she stuck her fingers in her mouth to withdraw the sticky mass, looked around for somewhere to put it and then mashed it into the first surface available.

Given Sherlock was carrying her in his arms at the time, his head was the obvious choice.

He was acutely aware that something heavy was hanging from the top of his head, but Violet was busy giggling and charming everyone in sight again, and kept kind of hugging him around his forehead and chin, so he decided it could wait. He didn't want to interupt all the cooing that was being done, or the looks he caught of people looking fascinated that Sherlock Holmes, of all people, had won the heart of this little treasure.

Of course, John didn’t notice straight away either. The top of Sherlock’s head was not actually in John’s line of sight, after all. Not until they got home and Sherlock dropped onto a chair at the dining table to continue with a half-done experiment. He’d forgotten about the weird feeling in his hair by then, and instead fired up his portable Bunsen burner and began to insert a series of different thicknesses of leather cuttings that had been marinated in a mixture of urine and yoghurt. There was probably a reason for the experiment, but he hadn’t mentioned it.

Violet sat down in her father’s chair to watch Sherlock and his smelly experiment. She took the lolly her daddy gave to her for being a good girl at the station and sucked on it solemnly while she watched.

And John walked past Sherlock to get the newspaper he’d left at the table, glanced over, stopped, and stared.

“Sherlock,” he said, “Why do you have gum in your hair?”

Sherlock remembered there’d been something odd about his hair and reached up to examine its source. He found the wad of gum, well and truly embedded there.

“Violet,” said Sherlock, giving her a look that blended patience and puzzlement, “Why did you put gum in my hair?”

Violet spat her lolly into her hand so she could reply. “It was interesting but then it was yucky,” said Violet, as though that made perfect sense.

“You should have given it to me to throw away.”

“You were _thinking_ ,” she pointed out reasonably, because when Sherlock had his thinky face on, he sometimes didn’t hear her when she asked him to do things.

Sherlock tilted his head and moved his face in an expression that pretty much said, _well, fair enough_.

Violet put the lolly back in her mouth.

John peered at the unholy mess in Sherlock's hair. “That’ll have to be cut out,” he declared.

“Don’t be ridiculous, John. Lighter fluid will work perfectly well on gum.”

And, leaving a square of soaked leather in a clamp over the low flame, Sherlock reached for the cigarette lighter he’d hidden underneath the oranges in the fruit bowl and began to crack it open.

John snatched it out of his hand. “Not while sitting next to an open flame, you don’t. Come on over to the sofa.” Sherlock acquiesced with a long suffering sigh, and John proceeded to spend ten fruitless minutes soaking the knot of hair and gum with lighter fluid and failing utterly to remove more than a third of the stuff.

On her daddy’s chair, Violet sucked on her lolly and watched with large eyes. She stayed well away from the table, on which the smelly leather was now scorching nicely and getting even smellier. One thing she was very good at was staying well away from Sherlock’s experiments. No touching, no looking too closely. Though it was always fun when they made smoke and smells and sometimes blew up a little bit.

“It’s no good.”

“You’re just ham-fisted,” stated Sherlock darkly, rising to fetch another lighter he’d hidden under the stack of mail on the desk. He was annoyed when John grabbed him by the back of the collar and hauled him bodily away from the table.

“And you don’t go near your _flaming Bunsen burner_ with lighter fluid _still in your hair_ , you brainless pillock!”

Sherlock collapsed onto the sofa with an annoyed huff.

“It’s not going to work anyway,” said John, “It’s too mashed up in there. I’m really going to have to cut it out.”

“No,” said Sherlock.

“Are you being a princess about your fucking hair?”

“No.”

“You are. You and your pretty fucking princess hair.”

On her chair, Violet giggled. The expression ‘pretty fucking princess hair’ got filed away in her five year old brain for future reference.

“I do not have princess hair, John.”

“You do,” John snorted, “You’re like a Disney princess. Isn’t he sweetheart?”

Violet nodded and pulled the lolly out of her mouth. “Like Mulan but curly,” she said. Then she popped the lolly back in and resumed sucking.

Sherlock frowned. John calling on Violet as back-up was never playing fair, even though he’d done exactly the same thing to John only last night – getting her to agree with him that John looked exactly like a picture of a hedgehog in one of her picture books.

(Well, but then she had pointed at an otter and pronounced it the spitting image of Sherlock. She then spent the hour before bed making up stories about the adventures of the otter and the hedgehog, and demanding that her daddies act out some of the scalier parts of the tales. John had ended up crying with laughter, particularly when Sherlock was required to be a ballerina for a minute and a half. Though he had to admit that Sherlock could do a very admirable and lovely pirouette.)

“Cut it out then,” snarled Sherlock, as though that proved he was nobody’s princess and certainly had no more than the usual regard for his hair. His _pretty fucking princess hair_.

John fetched the scissors and stood behind Sherlock, doing his  best to snip out the mess without causing a significant hollow in Sherlock’s princess crown of curls. It necessitated, unfortunately, a lot of little pulls and tugs.

John had not known until this moment what sensitive follicles Sherlock had. He knew now, because Sherlock kept twitching and wriggling and sometimes squealing a little bit at every pull.

“Stop it. Sit still.”

“You. Are. Pulling. My. Hair.”

“I am not pulling your hair.”

“ _You are pulling my hair_.”

“You do realise our five year old daughter makes less fuss than this?”

Violet spat her reduced lolly into her hand again. “Sherlock, Mummy always says if I’m good I can have a sweetie.”

Sherlock looked at her.

“If you’re good, you can have a sweetie,” she said, and smiled happily.

“See? You can have a sweetie if you’re good,” sniggered John.

“Just get it done.”

John gave up trying to salvage Sherlock’s pretty hair and just cut out the offending gum-despoiled curl. “There you go.”

Violet climbed off her daddy’s chair, walked over to Sherlock and said: “Open wide.”

Sherlock, vaguely mollified by Violet’s kind gesture, opened his mouth.

Violet popped the half-sucked lolly she held in her hand straight into Sherlock’s mouth. “Good boy,” she pronounced, in much the same tone her mother used when Violet had been a good girl.

Sherlock, who had certainly had grosser things in his mouth that a sweet covered in Violet’s drool, sucked on the lolly thoughtfully while John snickered.

“Thank you Violet,” he said around the sweet (he’d never been the one to deliver the lecture about speaking with one’s mouth full either) “And next time you have gum, what are you going to do with it?”

“So no thank you, Mister Macalister, gum is yucky.”

"And?"

"GIve it to you to put in the biohazard bin."

“Good girl,” said Sherlock approvingly. Only their girl would know what a biohazard bin was, and use it correctly in a sentence without prompting.

Violet looked at him, grinned with delighted crinkles around her nose and eyes, and pointed to the bit of his head where a curl used to be. “Pretty fucking princess hair,” she said, and giggled.

John tried to look innocent and failed.

Then with a shout, Sherlock jumped up to rescue his experiment, only to be pulled aside while John shoved his lighter-fluid-imbued friend out of harm’s way. John even managed to not do more than slightly singe his own lighter-fluid-imbued fingers while he was at it.

Frankly, when two days later the pair of them were sneaking through an underground car park trying to corner a double-murdering florist with malaria and an Elizabethan parchment in her handbag,  they both felt it was a  bit of a doddle, comparatively speaking.

 


End file.
